With the Light in Our Eyes
by Neko Kuroban
Summary: Not all those who wander are lost.
1. Chapter One

**Author's Notes (Neko Kuroban): **Life recently became incredibly hectic (for both my co-writer and I) and delayed the release of the next chapter of _Sightless,_ which will soon be posted. However, we certainly did not forget our audience! For your enjoyment, we present the prequel to _Sightless_.

_With the Light in Our Eyes_ is set in a mild alternate universe. Like _Sightless_, it works with canon knowledge throughout the first four books and disregards the existence of _The Last Olympian. _As always – we love each and every one of you, and any kind of feedback is greatly appreciated!

_With the Light in Our Eyes_ is dedicated in its entirety to MyPenIsSharperThanYourSword.

* * *

**With the Light in Our Eyes  
by Neko Kuroban and Sister Grimm Erin  
Chapter One:  
Proud You Halt Upon the Spiral Stair**

* * *

"_Love never fails. Whether they be prophecies, they shall fail. Whether there be tongues, they shall cease. Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away in the face of love._"  
— **1 Corinthians 13:8**

* * *

It was the day before Christmas Eve. The sun was setting in a haze of gray and lavender, and a soft drift of snow was falling over Connecticut. Luke Castellan bought a ticket for the first airplane departing from Bradley International. He did not give a damn as to where it was headed. The simple fact that it would enable him to leave his current demons in his wake was more than enough.

The flight he ended up taking across the country — a six-hour journey to Los Angeles, California, of all places — was at best unmemorable, at worst a minor annoyance.

A heavy-set businessman had sat beside him. The man complained about the many indignities associated with flying throughout the entire first hour. Luke tried to ignore him by reading a horror thriller – Stephen King, naturally – and listening to music. Avoidance had worked until the man downed too many gin and tonics and grew testy. He started asking (_demanding answers to_ would be more appropriate) question after question, each one increasingly personal: about school, about his plans for the future, about his reasons for travelling, about his family. Luke evaded him at every turn, crafting easy, genuine-seeming lies until the man lapsed into snoring slumber that lasted across the Midwest until the man awoke with a snort over Arizona.

The white-blonde boy disembarked from the plane with the strap of his carry-on slung over one slim shoulder. He had not checked any luggage; his duffel bag had been all he brought with him. It had been surprisingly easy to pack light. Looking around his bedroom, it was nearly impossible to think of anything that he actually wanted. There was nothing he assigned value – monetary or sentimental – to anymore.

The realization had not come as a surprise.

Luke set the valise down on a bench to shed his double-breasted pea coat, draping the black cashmere garment over his forearm. Compared to the bitter winter (_in more ways than one_, he reflected, not without a certain amount of disdain) he had known on the East Coast, he had no qualms with the prospect of Christmas being seventy-five degrees and sunny.

He wandered with neither aim nor purpose in mind.

_You are getting nowhere_, accused some part of himself — a sharp, critical voice that sounded suspiciously similar to the man he had once thought of as his father.

He brushed that concern aside.

It was a quarter past ten in California, but, back in Greenwich, Connecticut, it was 1:15 in the morning. He had first boarded the plane at what would have been dinnertime (nearly always a tense, awkward affair conducted with averted eyes and minimal conversation exactly at six; long sleeves optional but preferred), less than an hour after he had slammed the door behind himself for what he expected to be the final time. He did not feel weary as a result of jet lag — but, then again, he rarely did. He was naturally able to operate on very little sleep in a way few people could.

Instead of taking action, however, Luke found himself idly watching passerby as he made his way through LAX. His eyes flickered to the liquid crystal display announcing arrivals and departures in flashing red and green. Before he had left, he had taken both his passport and the original copy of his birth certificate — verifying his identity as Luke Christopher Castellan, born to Geoffrey John Castellan and Calanthe Rose Castellan (née Dahl), at two minutes to midnight on the seventeenth of November thirteen years ago.

It would be simple, he realized now, to leave this country behind. Endless possibilities lay before him. He could go anywhere: Japan, Mexico, Morocco, Italy...

"Samantha!" A shrill soprano called, and Luke snapped his head up, reverie shattered, as a woman surged past him. "Sammy!"

The woman's head snapped back and forth as she surveyed the crowded airport. She could have been anywhere from twenty-five to thirty. Twenty-eight, he decided after a moment. She wore her brown hair tied into a bundle of curls at her neck and an argyle sweater that dipped a few inches too deep into the valley between her generous breasts. She half-stumbled, half-ran in her wedge-heeled clogs. Genuine fear was written into her round face (_a sweet face_, a romantic would have written) as she scanned the other travelers and the shops that were still open. Most of the storefronts had their grates lowered to half-mast and their lights dimmed in preparation for closing.

"Sammy!" The woman continued to push and shove her way through the crowd, moving against the grain of the foot traffic. "This isn't funny! Samantha!"

She collided with a man — the same one who had sat beside Luke on the flight, the blonde noted. The man's face was red with exertion as he attempted to drag two rolling suitcases, both with peeling Roman letters spelling out his name. Both toppled when he lost his balance, but the woman never paused long enough to register the filthy glare she received.

Without warning, the woman's panicked voice changed. Joy and gratitude replaced the hysteria. "Oh! Thank you!" She was gushing to an apathetic-looking girl, a pale-skinned brunette. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

The girl was Luke's age, perhaps a little younger, petite and thin with large blue eyes and hair as black as the raven's wing. Something about her seemed oddly still and unapproachable.

Even so, the woman was obviously fighting the urge to draw her into an embrace. Luke saw the reason why: now clinging onto the woman's swirling broom skirt was a yawning, bleary-eyed little girl in a yellow frock.

"I can't thank you enough, sweetie. Is there anything I can do to..." The woman fumbled for the gilded clasp on her cracked leather pocketbook. "Surely you deserve..."

"Hardly." The girl shook her head in a single, decisive gesture. The action made her long, glossy hair ripple. "Just don't fucking lose her next time."

The woman appeared to be stunned. Luke wondered whether her reaction was due to the crudeness of the girl's remark or by the rejection of a proposed reward. Before the woman could respond, the little girl piped up to fill the silence with her high, chirping voice.

"Mummy, can we go get ice-cream?"

"Once we're in New York, sweetie," the woman hastened to reassure her, her interest in the girl already waning in favor of coddling her child. "Remember? We talked about this, Sammy. You can take a nap on the plane, and, when you wake up, we'll be where Daddy is so we can surprise him for Christmas. Remember? He'll be so happy to see us that I'm _sure_ he'll take you to get ice-cream."

Once mother and daughter had left (the woman clutching the little girl's hand in a vice-like grasp as she dragged her toward the boarding gate), the girl's eyes found his. He looked pointedly toward the pair as if to say _what can you do?_ She rolled her bright azure (God, had he _ever_ seen eyes as intense as hers?) eyes in knowing response, and he found a smile cross his features in spite of himself.

She spun on her heel, her hair fluttering out behind her, and sauntered away.

* * *

The next time he saw the girl nearly two hours later. She was sitting behind the plate glass window that dominated the façade of a coffee shop; it was one of few enterprises still open in the airport after midnight. He had not spared her much attention earlier, but now he could tell from a single glance: there was something from which she was running away.

Her body language was terse and closed, folded in on herself, and her long hair spilled down her back, so dark and thick it looked like nothing so much as motionless black water. She sat alone at the counter overlooking the busy corridor, but she was not people-watching as he would have been. Her narrow shoulders were hunched and tense, and she was drinking coffee, despite the late hour. Three polystyrene cups were gathered in front of her, not counting the one curled loosely in both slender hands. She seemed to be staring into its depths rather than actually drinking the liquid.

She looked up as Luke entered the café, and, again, their eyes caught.

Electric blue met sapphire.

He went to the counter. On a whim, he purchased two cups of coffee from a cashier in a uniform too bright for his expression and received the drinks from a barista who chatted in a voice that seemed far too cheerful to belong to someone working at midnight. He approached the girl from behind. A half-smile crossed his face when he noticed the closed hardcover book resting at her elbow: Stephen King's _Carrie_.

He touched her shoulder.

She whirled around to face him, ready with what was surely going to be a scathing retort. He offered his most charming smile and held the coffee out as a peace offering.

"Mind if I sit with you?"

The café was crowded, but it was far from full and the high counter she sat at was empty. She did not even lift her gaze to assess it.

"Yes," the girl answered immediately. "I _do_." He was about to turn away (thinking _God, what a bitch_) when she spoke again, her eyes still focused on her hands. "Never mind. Sorry. Of course you can sit here. Sit wherever you want."

"Thanks." He claimed the low-back stool beside hers. He set his coat down on the counter's surface, followed by his drink, and he pushed the extra beverage toward her. "Luke Castellan."

Finally, she looked at him, and he was struck by the simple perfection of her fine-boned face. Her intense eyes softened, just for an instant, and he noticed the hint of a smile teasingly the corners of her lips. "Thalia."

"Just Thalia?"

"I don't tell my last name to people I don't know. And..." She placed her hand on the cup's lid. It lingered there — only for an instant — before she pushed it back to him. "I don't take open drinks from people I don't know, either. Or anyone, really," she added as if as an afterthought.

The smile she had been hinting at became fully realized.

It was the first time the words _fucking_ and _beautiful_ had ever been paired in his mind.

Documents stuck out of the hard cover of her book: the blue of a passport, the white and red of a boarding pass, and the green laminated square badge given to minors travelling unaccompanied. It looked casual, as if she had slipped the papers there to mark her place, seventy or so pages into the story, as well as to keep from losing them, but he suspected that there was more to it than that.

If he had been faced with any of his vapid, shallow school friends, he would not have hesitated to pull it out and to start asking questions. Since when had he hesitated when confronted with strangers? He used to be able to read them as well — if not better — than people he had known all of his life, and, often, he preferred them. Had he lost that quality, just another facet of himself that had fallen by the wayside over the past two years, just one more casualty of everything that had happened?

However...this girl was different, something within him recognized. He could not get a feel for her with the same ease he could glance at someone else and effortlessly know everything: their weaknesses, their strengths, their joys and sorrows, what animated them and brought them to life.

The thought thrilled him as much as it disturbed him.

He indicated the papers with a tilt of his head. "Are you waiting for a flight, Thalia?"

"Something like that," she conceded. "At this point, it's actually a _little_ closer to 'running on autonomic instinct.'"

Luke felt himself smile. "So," he began, propping his chin on his loosely curled fist, and leaned forward. His sapphire eyes danced with mischief. "What are your instincts telling you — right now?"

"That I'm tired of fighting and should consider becoming a pacifist," Thalia replied. "Maybe I'll join a convent and marry Jesus."

His smile broadened into an amused grin. "Wouldn't you rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints?"  
She laughed. The sound was surprisingly rich and warm, but it came tainted with sadness — as if genuinely mirth was rare for her. "I wouldn't have pegged you for a Billy Joel fan, Luke Castellan."

She was all tense, nervous energy, but he found himself strangely at ease when talking with her. He could not remember the last time he felt so comfortable with _anyone_. "They played it in my religion class as a warning against premarital sex ages ago," he told her. "I stole the tape from the teacher the moment his back was turned."

Something in her features shifted, and she lowered her eyes. She pushed a wayward strand of hair out of her face, securing it behind her ear. "Where are you headed?"

Somehow, it did not seem abrupt.

"Nowhere," he admitted. His fingertips tapped out a staccato rhythm on the Formica countertop. "Why? Want to come with?"

"You're running away from something, aren't you?" She looked pointedly toward the bag he had set by his feet. He did not respond, and she took his silence as admission of the truth. "I thought as much."

"You, too." It was not a question.

"You could say that." She looked back at his carry-on. "Let me guess: you have valuables in there." It came as a challenge, as if she was trying to get a feel for his motivations.

Perhaps she was.

He was startled, but he covered it with ease — and a smirk that worked with most girls. "I was right, wasn't I?"

"Think of it as insurance." The words were grim, but there was a forced lightness in her voice. From the corner of her eye, he noticed one of her small hands curl into a fist, so tight that surely her fingernails must have bitten into her palm.

He took a sip of his drink for the first time. It was perfect. He barely noticed. "What would make you think I'm carrying anything valuable?"

She reached for the collar of the cashmere winter coat he had set on the table and flipped it up to reveal the satin lining — and the silk label stitched inside bearing the name of the expensive designer. "This." Next, she gestured toward his bag, an artfully distressed duffel made of calfskin leather, adorned with brass buckles and studs. "That. Not exactly a game I'm new to. So what are you carrying?"

"Jewelry, for one thing," he found himself admitting. "My stepmother's. I was planning to sell it."

"I know a man," she offered, and their eyes met. "He owns a jewelry store. I could show you."

She pulled into her lap her own bag, a messenger-style creation of leather and metal hardware, adorned with a rainbow brigade of patches and pins. The inside flap was lined with a brightly colored screen-print, he noticed when she opened it, revealing the chaos within. She shoved her book — and the documents it contained — inside. "I mean," she began as if she was trying not to sound _overly_ interested. "It's not like I have anything better to do."

* * *

In life, there are no new beginnings, because nothing ever ends.

However, that moment was, Luke Castellan would later come to realize, a turning point.


	2. Chapter Two

**Neko Kuroban and Sister Grimm Erin (sistergrimm2) would like to gratefully acknowledge the following readers for their reviews: storm-brain, Kelsey4794, ChocolateRain813, Colette Irving, and MyPenIsSharperThanYourSword. Thank you!**

* * *

**With the Light in Our Eyes **

**by Neko Kuroban and Sister Grimm Erin **

**Chapter Two: **

**Into an Anxious and Unsettling World**

* * *

_"Live on the edge. You'll take up too much room in the middle."_

* * *

_Don't trust this guy_, Thalia told herself firmly as she stole a sidelong glance at the blonde boy walking beside her. _Don't turn into your mother._

He would be out of her life soon enough. He was just a way for her to occupy her time while she sorted out her feelings. Her flight was not scheduled to leave for another eight hours. She was not even certain she could bring herself to board it. She genuinely believed that leaving was the right thing to do, but such an impulsive action seemed nearly childish in scope — wasn't she too practical to run away? Doing so made it look as if she only needed time to cool down, as if she was admitting that she was wrong when she knew that she was in the right.

_A distraction_. That was all that this strange blonde boy beside her was. So what if he was the most beautiful boy she had ever seen? So what if his sapphire eyes were broken and he smiled as if something pained him? So what if he moved with languid, easy grace, but, when at rest, looked like she did — tense, coiled energy, poised to strike? _Just a distraction._

"So you just _happen_ to know Rodeo Drive jewelers who would be open at this hour?"

Thirty minutes on the bus ("_Come on_," she had teased him. "_Los Angeles County public transportation at night. You'll get an education, I promise._") had brought them through different worlds. Closest to the airport were the disheartening concrete corridors of Ladera Heights and Inglewood, both of which she had wanted to avoid. She was a street-smart girl who knew how to avoid attracting attention, but that did not mean that she was stupid enough to wander into neighborhoods that girls of her upbringing had always been cautioned to avoid. They entered the city proper, where the districts began to rapidly and dramatically improve once the vehicle began to gain in altitude. The bus spit them out near the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills. (Thalia had meant to get off sooner, but, engrossed in conversation with her companion, she had missed her intended stop. When Luke asked, she claimed that she knew a shortcut, which she did, but closer to the truth was that the Avalon was simply a landmark she recognized.) From there, she led the way to Rodeo Drive.

"What can I say?" She half-lowered her eyelashes in a mockery of flirtation. "I am a girl of many faces."

As they approached a shopfront — the soft golden lights were still on, visible through the lightly frosted glass, though they had been dimmed — he mumbled something under his breath, thinking it would be too low for her to hear, but she caught it all the same: "I'm beginning to realize."

She put her back to him, ostensibly to ring the buzzer, but mostly to hide her grin.

There was no response.

She had expected this (there was probably a reason for the engraved brass placard that announced _closed_ hanging above the one that announced _entry by appointment only_), but she was hardly dissuaded. Instead, she pressed the intercom button. "Jeremy," she began, using a voice an octaves higher than she usually would. "It's Thalia. I was hoping we could talk."

There was a groan from the other end. "_It's the middle of Channukah and Christmas is in two days, little girl. I'm swamped. Don't you have dolls you can play with?_"

"You might be interested to know that I have a friend," she began.

"_Wow, T,_" he drawled, cutting her off. "_Congratufuckinglations. Good for you. Take that, middle school guidance counselor. What appeal does that have for me?_"

"He's looking to sell way below market value."

"_Is he with you right now?_"

"Yes."

No reply.

She waited.

Finally, he huffed a sigh. She knew the reluctance was a mere act to conceal his inherent greed. If it all genuine, it was his disgust for speaking without his usual pretensions. "_All right. I'll go disable the alarms and meet you and your little friend in the front in two minutes._"

He met her in forty seconds.

The man Thalia had called Jeremy opened the frosted glass door and offered a smile that made the word _oily_ jump, unbidden, to her mind. Her blue eyes flickered down to his wing-tipped Prada shoes before looking up at his face. He was not an unattractive man — far from it, actually — but he radiated the unimpressive aura of a man who cared far too much and far too deeply about what others thought of him.

He wore black linen slacks juxtaposed against a wine-colored silk button-down, his narrow black tie loosened at the throat. His layered hair, longer on one side than on the other, was artfully sculpted with product, and his red square-framed glasses were just ironically nerdy enough to be fashionable. It was one of the first times she had ever seen him without a blazer or a vintage velvet smoking jacket; instead, he wore a leather jeweler's apron around his waist as if to protect his clothing.

This, like so much about him, was just another front.

"Thalia, darling, sweetheart!" the man greeted her, purely for Luke's benefit. She was sure he had withered once he realized he had said something as crass as _congratufuckinglations_ in front of a potential customer. He looked as if he might attempt to kiss her cheek in a bid at atonement.

_Do not come near me_, Thalia reprimanded him silently, radiating ice and disapproval. She folded her arms over her chest.

Her wordless hostility might have worked, because he merely gave her a dark look and turned away to face the boy at her side. With his best attempt at a smile (it came out as a flimsy, insincere gesture, and she knew that it was), he spun to face Luke, holding out a soft hand. "Sage Gupta. _Charmé_. And you are...?"

"Don't be fooled. His real name is Jeremy Smith," Thalia stage-whispered to Luke, just loud enough that she knew the man had heard her. "I've seen his driver's license."

Luke pointedly ignored the proffered hand, and the man let it fall, his shrewd eyes becoming even sharper. "What have you got for me?" he asked, voice cold and assessing.

Thalia noticed the way the blonde's back almost imperceptibly stiffened. "Some high-end things," he answered after a moment. "Like she said, I _am_ willing to go way below market value."

A new light entered Sage's eyes, and Thalia resisted the urge to roll her own. _No wonder my mother dumped you. You're an emotionless gold-digger._

"Perfect," he replied. "Let me take a look. Did you bring any documentation?"

"I have the proof of insurance certificates for most of them." Luke set his bag down on the polished counter top. "Not the gemstone certification."

"I could do a grading report if you're willing to wait until after the holida—"

"I'm not," Luke interrupted. He opened the zippered side compartment, all business, and removed seven black velvet cases, each emblazoned with curling script spelling out initials in gold: _TVC_. He placed them in a row along the counter, but Thalia, standing at his side, noticed that he left two simpler white boxes in his bag.

She wondered why — _maybe I can ask him later_ — and then rebuked herself sharply. _Don't get attached. There's bound to be something about him I won't like_, she reminded herself, cynical to a fault. _I'll just sit back and wait to be disillusioned._

The jeweler scrutinized each piece in turn; it was an obvious struggle for him to keep his features smooth and disinterested. Even beneath the mask, it was apparent that he was thrilled by what he saw laid out before him. "Five thousand," he said at last, voice dismissive.

Luke raised one eyebrow. "That's something like four percent of what this lot is actually worth."

"Don't try and get me over a barrel here, kid. Consider my offer to be in exchange for not making a few phone calls. I'm certain that..." Sage spared a glance to the insurance documents. "Geoffrey Castellan would be interested to know why registered jewelry is being sold under the table at this time of night. Five thousand — or you and your little girlfriend can get out. I have work to do that's far more important than baby-sitting."

Thalia leaned against the glass counter, playing at a casualness she did not feel. "You know perfectly well that's not even _close_. Your eyes tell the truth, Jeremy." Knowing her words would be a twist of the knife, she added, "Even my _mother_ knew that. Didn't she?"

Thalia had to give him credit where credit was due: he only _nearly_ flinched.

Luke seized the opportunity provided by the sudden tension. "Twenty thousand."

Sage snorted. "And here I thought you were interested in low-balling. Seven."

"Ten," Luke countered.

"Ninety-five hundred," Sage drawled, but something beneath the confidence in his voice faltered: he was desperate to make the sale. "And that's my final offer."

"You know what?" Luke allowed himself to smirk. "I'm willing to negotiate. We can go down to nine thousand if you give me the contact information for the P.I. next door. I'll give you my number in case it turns out to be a false lead."

Thalia glanced over at the blonde boy beside her, surprised. Although she was familiar with the area, she had barely registered the tinted windows and austere front of the private investigator's office next door. She had not thought he had noticed, much less remember, the darkened office for S. & J. Investigations. What was there to remember about it?

From the corner of her eye, she noticed the momentary hesitation written into Sage's features. With a sudden scowl that was much more sullen than menacing, he pulled out his keys and bent to unlock a drawer set into the smooth white marble base of the counter. Pulling it out revealed the fastidiously organized contents: office supplies, a few small tools and folded cleaning cloths, and a small wooden box. From the tiny box, he pulled a dramatic red and black business card.

"I'd recommend talking to Jacobs rather than Smithson," Sage said as he slid it to Luke. He withdrew from his leather apron one of his own business cards, as well as a small pad of stationary and a heavy-barreled Montblanc pen, setting each in turn on the glass surface. "Write your contact information there. I'll be right back. I need to cut you a check."

"Cash," Thalia corrected.

Sage's face was far from happy, but she knew his irritation was tempered by his own greed. _Typical have_, she thought disdainfully. _Never satisfied, no matter how rich he is._

"Fine," he ground out with forced pleasantness, and she manufactured a smile. He whirled on his heel and disappeared into the back, leaving Thalia alone with Luke.

Luke offered her a languid, indolent grin, and she felt something in her chest constrict. "Thanks," he murmured after a moment, keeping his light voice hushed.

"You're welcome." Was she blushing? Surely, she must have been. Why else would she feel so warm? To distract herself, she took the pen Sage had left and scrawled a string of seven numbers on the creamy paper: _919-376-9503_. "Use this as your contact number. It—"

They were interrupted by Sage's return. "Here." He placed the money on the counter in a piecemeal fashion: nine piles, each consisting of ten one hundred dollar bills.

As Thalia watched the man count it out, she stole the occasional glance at Luke. There was a curious hardness in his dark blue eyes, which had seemed so much softer when he had been alone with her before. At last, he nodded, an almost imperceptible gesture, and thanked him (referring to Sage as Mr. Smith, she noticed, amused) stacking the bills and wrapping the provided rubber band around them. The bundle disappeared into his bag.

"Pleasure doing business," Thalia said wryly. She paused, just for a heartbeat, before adding impishly, "Jeremy."

Thalia and Luke were not hand in hand when they left the shop or even walking in step with one another — but, this time, when she looked over at him to check his expression, he smiled.

* * *

Life may be a map, but there are no points of reference, no mile markers, no landmarks you can go by. There is nothing to say: _this person will become vital to you — cherish them, love them, hold them fast. Commit what they say to memory for one day it will be lost. Cling to them while you can, but you might as well try to hold the wind. Nothing is eternal, and nothing is yours. _

Perhaps there should be.

(Even the stars themselves burn out, Thalia Grace.)


	3. Chapter Three

**With the Light in Our Eyes **

**By Neko Kuroban and Sister Grimm **

**Dedicated to MyPenIsSharperThanYourSword**

**Chapter III:**

**All that Glitters**

* * *

_All that is gold does not glitter; not all those who wander are lost. The old that is strong does not wither. Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes, a fire shall be woken; a light from the shadows shall spring. Renewed shall be blade that was broken. The crownless again shall be king._

* * *

"You do realize that we've just walked something like five miles, all of them uphill, don't you?"

"We're only still at the base of the mountains," Thalia responded. "And going uphill is a good thing in L.A. It means that you're getting further away from the parts that you wouldn't want to be in."

Luke sounded more amused than he should. "What — if we go downhill, we're in the projects?"

"Worse: if we go downhill from here, we end up in Santa Monica. It's a resort town," she added, solely for his benefit. "The poor areas are deeper in the Basin, in the Valley, or closer to the water. Gentrification took over in west L.A. You saw Ladera Heights and Inglewood while we were on the bus. Do you really think any of the people we saw ended up there by choice?"

"I'm sure the drunk outside the strip club did."

"I'll give you that," she conceded. "He didn't look like someone brought him to a bachelor party at gun point."

The problem with Brentwood, she mused, was that it looked exactly like what people expected Los Angeles to look: shiny, new buildings in commercial districts along the highway and narrower residential streets lined with low structures, made of white stucco and capped with a red tile roof. New apartment buildings and rowhouses designed to look weathered were nestled beside the townhouses and single-family homes of the 1930s. It was a neighborhood of hanging Spanish mosh, vivid flowers in bloom, and wisteria climbing up trellises, but it was impossible not to admit that it had its own kind of seediness — little violent crime, many more sins of over-entitlement and mindless self-indulgence.

"This is where you grew up."

Whatever else he might have been, Luke Castellan was perceptive.

Thalia stepped on a crack. "You could say that. Formative years, anyway."

What she did not tell him was that it was fairly recent. Until a few years ago, she had lived in the gated heights of Bel-Air, although she had been born in the Hamptons. In honesty, Thalia actually preferred Brentwood, the neighborhood she had dragged Luke to following their sojourn to Rodeo Drive. A village within a city, it masqueraded as modest yet elite, but the truth was that it was a pocket of affluence barely tempered by urban reality. Settled half-way up the Santa Monica Mountains, it was a neighborhood of independent political bookstores, designer boutiques, and quirky, overpriced cafes, bordered by the Platinum Triangle neighborhoods of Malibu, Pacific Palisades and Bel Air.

Thalia knew the network of the streets here as well as she could read an analog clock. In the early morning light, sights she had long been inured to appeared almost pretty. Beneath the rising winter sun, the colorless concrete pavements and white homes were bathed blood-orange. The glittering ocean, only just visible behind them, seemed darker in the crimson-hued light. Flowering erythina blazed, even in December. The fan palms and magnolia trees, still flourishing in the seventy-degree heat, seemed charming instead of simply garish. Even a handful of stray broken glass on the sidewalk glittered.

"This way," Thalia said, grabbing Luke's arm to cut across the street at the intersection. The traffic signal had not yet changed, and a blue Mercedes, one of the few cars on the street at this early hour, blasted its horn. Thalia flipped the driver off without so much as a glance. "I need to get some stuff."

"And you needed to bring me with you?" He asked when she released him.

She stopped to look up at him. "Would you be able to find your way back to LAX without me?"

"You've appointed yourself my guide, haven't you?"

"You'll have to ignore the lack of Star Tours. Those cost extra."

"A modern-day Sacagawea."

The term made her think — not without some remorse — of her friend Daniel, who was always dubbing her with whatever random nickname that came to mind or fit the situation. They had been best friends since grade school, but they had been drifting apart as of late, mostly due to his newly discovered desire for popularity. She didn't understand his social climbing, and her social isolation (_self-imposed_, or so people were constantly telling her) was a burr in his side. Daniel had chosen his new friends over her, but did that mean he didn't care? Would he be hurt that she had left without so much as a note?

"If you promise to never call me that again, I'll show you where Marilyn Monroe and Shirley Temple lived. I could even point out where Joan Crawford beat her kid with wire coat hangers and where everything happened with O.J. and Nicole."

Luke gazed down at her, and, reflexively, Thalia swallowed. The red-gold light danced off of his pale, delicate features and tangled in his white-gold hair. She had to admit to herself that he was one of the best-looking boys she had ever seen — and there was far from a shortage of good-looking youths at the private school she went to, although she reviled most of them. He had a graceful, elegant way of moving, but his body language was as closed as hers was. It was something more than his finely carved lips or sharp cheekbones or long lashes that drew her to him, some intangible aura. It was not charisma. She knew the effects of that well enough to spot them.

It was greater than that.

_I've seen better_, she tried to tell herself. _And most of them have turned out to be assholes who feel like the world owes them something by virtue of being wealthy and attractive. Just because he's nice to you doesn't mean anything. His haircut screams private school, and look at his clothes. He's probably running away because his dad kicked him out for being gay._

"I'll settle for Cole Porter," he told her.

_Yeah_, Thalia decided. _Luke Castellan is definitely gay. All gay, all day, everyday. That confirms it. How many straight guys make musical theater references? _"And here I was ready to bargain up to Harrison Ford's new place. Guess you're not one for space cowboys."

"We should probably steer clear, unless he wants to come outside to find 'Han shot first' written in spray paint on the street." He paused for effect. "Outlined in gasoline." Another beat. "On fire."

She could not help but laugh. _Okay. Maybe not gay_. "That would make more of an impact than the cookies my friend tried to Fed Ex. Together, they spelled out the same thing. Or 'has fist thorn' or 'shan't first ho.' It depends on how you anagram it."

"Or 'harsh fist ton.'" Luke flashed a self-indulgent smile. "I went to school with Milo and Louis Gibson. After the fourth _Lethal Weapon_ movie came out, everyone was just kind of embarrassed on their behalf. My friend anonymously sent them a sheet cake."

Thalia had to know. "Did it say anything?"

"Well," Luke drawled. "'Sorry your dad has no problem being an asshole' was my suggestion." His expression was one of impossible innocence. "Curiously, she didn't take me up on it. It probably wouldn't have fit."

"That is just the message I've always wanted to receive written in frosting on chocolate cake," Thalia noted sarcastically. "Ideally with sugar-spun flowers."

"Weirdly enough?" Luke asked. "Me, too." He laughed, but there was a sharp, bitter note to it that crawled beneath her skin.

"This way," she said, indicating a side street lined with tall fan palms. "My house" — she did not, could not, say _home_ — "isn't far. Where are you from?" She tried to sneak the question in, hoping to get it out of the way without raising tension.

The shadow that crossed his face told her she had failed.

"If you don't want to talk about it..." He had started walking faster; she had to quicken her steps to keep up with his longer stride. "We don't have to."

And then — later, she would scold herself for it — Thalia reached out with her fingertips and grazed the fabric of Luke's sleeve. The barest of touches...and yet he halted where he stood. She let her hand fall to her side, feeling heat come to her face.

"No, it's fine," Luke answered after a moment, and he fell back into step beside her as if nothing had happened, as if that darkness she had seen there had never existed. "Greenwich, Connecticut."

She dismissed it as having been nothing. "My west coast kicks your east coast's ass," she claimed, trying to keep her tone light.

"We have better pizza," he protested, the mischief returning to his blue eyes.

She dismissed this with a wave of her hand. "But you can't find decent sushi, Mexican food, or their bastard love child: fish tacos." She smirked at the expression of slight disgust on his face. "Don't tell me you haven't had fish tacos."

"I can't say I have — and my life has probably been richer for it." He shook his head. "Do your fish tacos come complete with mercury poisoning and salmonella?"

"Only the ones at the pop-up taco cart." God, why did she feel like smiling all the time when she was with him? She almost never smiled. "The nicer places just give you tapeworm that destroys your organs," she added wickedly. "Up here."

She brought him to a complex of nine Spanish-style townhouses built to frame a central courtyard. The large, bright houses were all alike: crisp, clean white with vivid red accents, three stories high, large windows with plantation shutters, red-tiled balconies with narrow balustrades. The property was entered through an imposing-looking wrought iron gate. Los Angeles was a city of fences, both literal and symbolic.

Did she even want to do this? She drew in a breath to steady herself and reached for her two keys, which she, sick of losing it in the chaos of her school bag, usually wore on a chain around her neck, hidden beneath her shirt. Her fingers touched only bare skin. She swore beneath her breath as she remembered exactly where it was. She had taped the two small keys — chain and all — to a mirror in her mother's bedroom, where it stood as much a silent comment on the woman's vanity as it was Thalia's final _fuck you_.

"Something wrong?" Luke prompted when she did not take action.

"Forgot my keys," she mumbled beneath her breath. "I guess—"

He set his bag on the sidewalk and then knelt beside it, rifling through its contents. Finally, he withdrew a plain white envelope and rose. He pulled out of the packet a long, slender wire. She tried to watch his hands as he worked it into the keyhole and manipulated it, but his fingers' movement was too subtle for her to catch the nuances of what he was doing. After several seconds that seemed like minutes, the gate swung open on silent hinges.

She raised an eyebrow. "How very criminal of you."

"Let's just consider it a very useful life skill." He shoved the envelope into the back pocket of his dark jeans and grabbed his duffel, throwing it over his shoulder with ease. "Which one's yours?"

"On the end." She indicated it with a tilt of her head. "You'll need to teach me that trick."

"Maybe someday," Luke answered lightly. Thalia felt oddly pleased by this statement, even though she knew that it was far from likely that this day would come to pass. _He probably won't be in my life after the next few hours anyway._ "Is the front door alarmed?"

"Technically," she granted. Off his look, she explained, "It's alarmed in as much as that there is an alarm and that the company sends a bill once a month, but it's never set. With my luck, though," she continued, more to herself than to him, "this is probably the only time she remembered."

"She?"

Apparently, it was too much to hope that he had not heard her. "My..." The word _mother _caught in her throat. "My sister," she lied. "I live with her."

He knew she was lying — she could see that in his eyes — but he pretended to believe her.

She liked him for that.

Instead of trying the front door, she brought Luke around to the back, where a narrow fire escape climbed the back of the building. They were common in most places in the city, physical manifestations of intangible fears of earthquakes and wildfires. It was almost a necessity in a part of the city where people could still remember the Brentwood-Bel Air fire a generation ago.

Thalia went quickly up the stairs, Luke at her heels. Her bedroom was on the third story, although the fire escape continued up to the flat sun deck on the roof. It would have been easy to pick a lower window, but the one in her bedroom that overlooked the narrow walkway would be the simplest to break into. She never closed the wooden blinds, and she never locked the windows. How many times had she slipped out her window on nights when sleep eluded her?

_And, with some luck, no one is going to check my bedroom for a very long time_, she thought grimly as she forced it open. There was a trick to applying pressure to it, but, after it had lifted the first inch, the window was easy to push the rest of the way upwards.

She could feel Luke's disapproval behind her. "You live in a city of three million people...and you don't lock your bedroom window at night."

"It's closer to four million," she corrected, before dryly adding, "But thanks for your concern. Honestly, though?" Why was she _saying_ this? Why was she willingly making herself vulnerable for some boy she barely knew? "I've never had any feeling of security in my life. I doubt that locking my bedroom window at night would help."

With that, she crawled through her open bedroom window, calling for him to join her over her shoulder when he did not immediately follow. When he actually did come in, however, it struck her that she could count on one hand the number of people who had ever been inside her bedroom, and, of them, the only boy had been her friend Daniel. She was not prone to fits of girlish insecurity, but she suddenly wondered what her bedroom looked like to a male gaze.

What _did_ her room say? She was hardly the kind of girl who needed flowered wallpaper to match the carpet and the bedspread. She did not keep boy band posters hung on the ceiling nor trophies lined up on her desk. Most girls her age had childhood remnants still strewn about, a few treasured things alongside the teenagers they were beginning to change into, but she had never had the patience for dolls, even when she was much younger. Even Daniel's sprawling bedroom in his parents' Pacific Palisades home bore the stamp of his personality: every inch of available wall space was covered by wall scrolls from his favorite animé series and posters for movies and video games, the surfaces cluttered, and everything kept in a perpetually haphazard state.

The girl who had lived in this third-floor bedroom existed only as a figure in the minds of others.

Her bedroom was not small, but it did not have the cavernous, empty feeling that Daniel's did. It was a space where it was possible to close the door and shut out the rest of the world. It wasn't as careless as Daniel's, either. _At least my mess is an organized one._ The hardwood floor was visible, though there were a few errant clothes and books and papers strewn about. There were things she needed to be precise and exact about, but she had a tendency to tidy only when she was tired of looking at it or trying to locate a particular thing. (The housekeeper was not permitted in her bedroom. Thalia couldn't abide the thought of someone else going through her belongings.)

The once impersonal white walls were painted blue, a shade her mother would have referred to as _Tiffany blue_, and the high ceiling was green. The two colors almost contrasted, almost complimented one another, and she quite liked the inversion. One wall was striped, blue alternating with green. The far wall was filled with a watercolor mural that had never been finished — and, now, she realized, it never would be. Another was filled with photographs she had taken herself, which she had arranged in a staggered pattern, the way someone else might lay bricks. The small gaps between the photos were filled with writing in silver and black ink: doodles, notes, poetry, song lyrics, anything.

The two large windows both had plantation shutters that she never closed. Wooden blinds looked nice, but they only softened the way the light streamed in instead of blocking it. Instead, over the window she and Luke had entered hung curtains that one of her nannies (she thought it was the third, but it might have been the fourth — she had had six or seven in all) had fashioned out of a turquoise blue sari, stitched with threads of green and gold and darker blue, on a whim. A prism caught the light in the opposite window, reflecting shards of early morning light.

She couldn't remember the last time she made her bed. A full-sized with an ornate wrought iron frame, it had once been draped with a translucent canopy, which she had long since taken down. The cotton sheets were tangled with one another, and there was a bundle of cast-off clothes, her school uniform, balled at the foot. The white duvet was spilling onto the floor; she had a habit of kicking it off while she slept in favor of the lighter fleece blanket.

She glanced at the boy in her bedroom and used the toe of her boot to discreetly nudge a pair of panties underneath her bed. _Just in case._ It was not as if everything else — books, CDs, homework, toys for the pet cat she no longer had — did not end up there.

Her nightstand held a stained glass reading lamp she rarely used to actually read. She had replaced the regular bulb with a black light that cast the room in a queer ultraviolet glow. The book she had been reading (_Forged by Fire_, her place marked with a dog-eared corner) a few nights before sat beside her CD player and headphones. There was an uneven stack of CD cases beside it, most of what she had been listening to lately — Green Day, Blink 182, Sevendust, Pennywise, Less Than Jake, Dropkick Murphy, and others. The top drawer of her nightstand contained more CDs; the others were much more random in contents.

In one corner rested her violin in its stand, although she had not so much as picked the instrument up, even to tune it, in nearly three months. Thalia had been good —_ better than good_, or so she had been told — but she had lost interest in it once her skill had begun to develop to the point where more and more people had started to take notice. Their attention had ruined the appeal. She no longer had the violin she had first played on, a simpler student instrument. The one she had kept was Lott's version of the del Gesu.

(It had been an extravagant gift from her uncle, but why would he give her such an expensive present? She wondered. He may have been the one who paid for her to attend private school — another gesture she did not understand — but it was hardly as if he_ knew _her. She had met the man on exactly two occasions. Once had been when she was a very young child, but the second time was much more recent. About a year ago, she had returned home from school, expecting an empty house, to find a man with her mother's fair hair and green eyes sitting on the edge of the living room sofa. Her mother, who had looked to be on the verge of tears, was curled at the opposite end. Hearing Thalia enter, the man rose to greet her with the false cheer adults used when speaking to very young children. He had left within minutes, and her mother had immediately gone to fortify herself with a neat glass of vodka.)

On her desk chair was a pile of clean laundry Thalia had once intended to sort and put away, and there was a pair of shoes under her desk, left where she had kicked them off a few days before. Her desk drawers may have been filled with half-chewed pens and school papers, hair bands and black nail varnish, but the surface was organized. Three cameras were placed in a neat rank, arranged by size, beside a shoebox containing film that had not yet been developed. Spread out were a few photos that had been developed; they were all the same shot but frozen in different stages of retouching. There were a few half-empty glasses of water and a few drained cups that had once held coffee that had never made it to the kitchen. Why did she have an intermediate French dictionary? (She didn't even _take_ French. Latin had been her foreign language since everyone had been made to choose in first grade. It must have been Daniel's.)

The mirror over her dresser was obscured with more developed photographs, quotations on Post-It notes, and library receipts she had taped up and never took down. The dresser was covered with a synthetic silk runner she had found in Japantown, ironically depicting a popular Chinese motif of a dragon fighting a phoenix over a pearl. The intricate bronze birdcage, meanwhile, had come from a thrift store in North Hollywood. Thalia had removed the hinged doors and turned it into somewhere to hang her necklaces. It worked better than her rarely used jewelry box, where everything had turned into a tangled snarl and she could never find a match to her earring. One of her mother's boyfriends, one of the ones who had tried too hard, had given her a silver-plated set (comb, brush, mirror, perfume atomizer) with her name engraved in curling script. Discarding it was more of a statement than keeping it was. A mug made in last year's art class was filled with half-used eyeliner pencils and dried out tubes of mascara and lip gloss she had broken the seal on to use once and never again opened.

A full-length mirror stood alone with a defeated-looking towel laying in a crumpled heap at the base. The two long waist-high bookcases were crammed with everything: books from Mercedes Lackey to Agatha Christy to Charles Dickens; brightly colored manga; animé tapes (a lot of Japanese-language bootlegs with English subtitles but a number of legitimate English dubs for more mainstream series); a few oversized art books; back issues of magazines. She was not the sort of girl who clung on to childhood, but the large papasan chair, with its round purple cushion and white wooden frame, provided a home for a plush snow leopard that she did not quite have the heart to throw away.

The double doors to her closet had been left open. It was technically a walk-in closet, but it was long and narrow rather than wide. The only posters in her room were on the inside of those two doors; she usually thought they only served to make a room look tawdry and tacky. One door held a large poster of James Dean, looking at his reflection in a frozen pond. The other held a small grouping of glossy pictures, taped in three rows of three to form a square. The Beatles walking across Abbey Road in a single file line. Marilyn Monroe in a low-cut black dress. Audrey Hepburn smoking a French cigarette. Kurt Cobain looking plaintive.

There had once been her own mother as a long-haired, thin-limbed teenage ingénue — a girl looking up through her eyelashes as coy as any biblical temptress; a girl who held herself the way girls who knew they were beautiful did; a girl who seemed so fragile and so unmendable — but Thalia had torn it down, replaced it with Cyd Charisse's white pearl smile and black pin curls and dancing spider eyes.

She turned to face Luke only to discover that he had crossed to her bookshelf, where he was examining the contents. "Overwhelming?" She teased.

"Compared to my bedroom... hardly." He looked up to her, and, God, why did her stomach tighten a little when he looked at her like that? "You're going to have to explain the James Dean thing to me, though. I've never quite gotten the appeal."

"Tragic, cute, died young. What is there not to get? I'll just get what I need, so we can go."

Her own words struck her as being ironic: what she needed, she would never find here.

She knew that now.


End file.
